PowerPoint Accessibility
Converting PowerPoint to HTML
Article Contents
- Page 1: PowerPoint Accessibility
- Current page: Page 2: Converting PowerPoint to HTML
- Page 3: Alternatives to PowerPoint
The Office Accessibility Wizard
The University of Illinois has created an add-on to PowerPoint that does a good job of converting PowerPoint slides into an accessible HTML format. Using the add-on is quite simple:
- Download the add-on - external link
- Install the add-on
- Open a PowerPoint file
- Select
- Follow the instructions
Downloading and installing the add-on
The add-on is written in the C# (C Sharp) programming language. You will need the .Net Framework installed on your computer.
Once you have downloaded the file, you will need to install it. If you downloaded both the .Net Framework and the add-on, the installation will take several minutes. The add-on itself installs quickly, but the .Net Framework takes longer.
Running the add-on
After you have installed the add-on, open a slide presentation within PowerPoint, then select . Be very patient, it sometimes takes several minutes to load.
Once the add-on finally shows up, it walks you through the process of making an accessible HTML version of your slides. If there are images, the add-on will pop up a window like this:
The add-on asks that the user identify what type of image is present. The choices are decorative image, informative image, or chart. After selecting the image type, another dialogue box appears, asking the user to provide alternative text for the image.
You should provide a short description of the image, but you also have the option of providing a long description. The wizard will take you through the process of identifying and fixing all of the images in the slide presentation. If your presentation had any charts, created in Microsoft Office, the Wizard will add descriptive tables to these as well. If they were created outside of Office, the Accessibility Wizard helps you create a table manually.
After you enter the appropriate alternative descriptions for all the images, you will see a screen with several options.
This is where you decide the different formats to which you will export the PowerPoint file. There are several options on this screen worth mentioning:
- Output Formats: Each one of these formats is a valuable way to represent the PowerPoint file.
- Text Only: All the images in the presentation will be replaced with links.
- Text Mostly: All the text and relevant graphics for the original file are present, but decorative images and the styled template are removed. If you only choose one format, this should be the one.
- Graphical: Each page is a graphic. If you choose this format, make sure you have also selected or .
- Outline: The content from all the slides appears on one page, but the graphics are completely ignored, as well as hyperlinked text. Not even the
alttext is available. For that reason, we don't recommend using this format if you have any images that convey meaning. - Handout: The slides are displayed three to the printed page, with an empty box for written notes next to each one.
- Graphical Formats: The default is 800 X 600. This is probably sufficient , but you can choose other formats as well.
- Include Speaker notes: If you check this box, speaker notes will be included on all the versions except the Graphic and Handout versions.
- Color Scheme: This list allows you to choose the color scheme of the navigation bars on the top and bottom of most of the screens. It does not affect the colors of the slides themselves.
The end result
See a slide show that was converted using this method.
The end result is a slide presentation that works well with screen readers and that can be enlarged or diminished in size to accommodate the needs of people with low vision.
A word of caution
Despite the fact that this add-on works remarkably well, it cannot convert PowerPoint scripts into accessible HTML. If you use PowerPoint scripts you will need to modify the HTML version to accommodate these features.
Using the Option in PowerPoint
Microsoft
has created a rather simple interface for creating Web pages out of
your
PowerPoint slides. The result is very
good... as long as you're not blind. The resulting HTML files
of the built-in web conversion utility are not friendly to
screen readers. In PowerPoint 2000 and earlier, the slides did not always
contain real text in all browsers, and the navigation buttons and graphics
did not contain alt text. In PowerPoint
XP and later, those problems
have been addressed, but the page layout is still complicated by an unfriendly
and confusing frame layout which is difficult for the unsighted user
to decipher.
To convert your PowerPoint file to a web page, select . Make sure to save the file as and not .
The resulting file looks something like this:
The column on the left displays all the slides in the presentation,
the top right frame shows the slide and the frame beneath it displays
the speaker's notes, if there are any. You can navigate from slide to
slide by either clicking on the appropriate slide in the left-hand column,
or by clicking on the arrows on the bottom right-hand side of the screen
.
Making Your Own HTML Using the Outline
One way to make your slides accessible to the blind is to create an outline in standard HTML. You can copy all of the content in the outline view of PowerPoint into an HTML editor and format it yourself in the appropriate ways.
If you're careful, this can be an accurate (and time-consuming) way to make the slides accessible to the blind. But there are some big pitfalls.
Pitfall 1
When you use the text-box tool in PowerPoint, none of the text that you put in the text box shows up in the outline. This means that you will need to retype anything that you put in a text box (or avoid using text boxes).
Pitfall 2
None of the graphics are included in the outline. If the graphics are important to the presentation, you'll have to describe them (in text) in your HTML outline.
Pitfall 3
None of the embedded content is included in the outline (e.g. videos, charts, graphs, sounds, etc.). If any of these are important, you will need to provide a text description of them.
Pitfall 4
Sometimes the outline needs to be reorganized in order to read logically. For example, it is common to put the same heading on two or more slides in a row. The fact that this same heading is repeated may or may not cause confusion when being listened to by a blind person. Use good judgment in formatting the outline.
The biggest drawback to this method is that it is time-consuming and it requires fairly good knowledge of HTML in order to produce a truly effective document.
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